


Complications

by venndaai



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: Arranged Marriage, F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 14:25:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17045384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/pseuds/venndaai
Summary: Brezan and Tseya's wedding is interrupted.





	Complications

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zdenka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zdenka/gifts).



High General Kel Brezan was seriously considering the pros and cons of getting embarrassingly drunk at his own wedding.

On the one hand, if he managed to correctly guess which of these ridiculously expensive drinks (he’d seen the budget report) had the highest alcohol content, there was a very high chance he’d do something to embarrass the entire newly-unified Hexarchate in front of several important foreign dignitaries. On the other hand, he’d be embarrassing Inesser. She richly deserved to be embarrassed.

Brezan had never put much thought into marriage before the Protector-General had come up with this scheme. It had always seemed to work well for his fathers. They hadn’t had any big wedding, just two small ceremonies. Intimate occasions with friends and family. Brezan imagined that must have been nice.

He, however, had to get married in the largest reception hall on Terebeg 4- a truly vast space that still seemed slightly too small to hold the number of dignitaries currently crammed into it- and he had to be married by the head of state herself, who had come up with the whole thing- and he had to be married to someone he hadn’t been alone with for more than ten minutes in the past ten years.

A desire for alcohol was more than reasonable, under such circumstances.

The young man behind the bar was dressed in Andan blue and silver. Tseya’s family had arranged the catering for the occasion. Brezan wondered what labyrinthine politics had led to that arrangement. The last and only time he had met some of Tseya’s relatives they had not seemed to enjoy being in his vicinity. But he supposed the status benefits of overseeing the largest social event of the decade outweighed even the potential strain of coming face to face with a man who bore some responsibility for their mother’s death.

“What would you recommend?” Brezan asked the bartender. Glancing over his shoulder, he caught sight of someone in Kel dress golds apparently heading his way. Hurriedly he turned his head away. Could be worse, he told himself. Could be red and gold robes. Shuos Mikodez was here somewhere, no doubt chattering away while half the guests wished for his demise.

“Well, sir, that depends on what you’re in the mood for,” the bartender said cheerfully. He was pouring red liquor into very small blue paper cups.

“I’m in the mood to get drunk,” Brezan said, eloquently. “Make it something that hits fast, so there’s no time for my minders to force-feed me sober ups.”

“I know exactly the thing, sir,” the bartender said. His cheerfulness reminded Brezan unpleasantly of several Shuos of his acquaintance.

“Brezan,” someone said behind him. Brezan turned. His rictus of a fake smile relaxed somewhat when he saw that the Kel colors belonged to General Khiruev.

“General,” he said, swallowing back the “sir” that wanted to come out even after a decade.

“Congratulations,” Khiruev said, and Brezan felt his heart sink. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her look that genuinely happy.

“Thank you,” he said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the bartender slide him a glass in the shape of a flower, full of something dark purple. Gratefully he raised it to his lips and took a gulp. He’d have to tip the man handsomely. Inesser had refused to let him pay for any of this, so at least he had a lot of money in his account for tips.

“I was just talking to your fathers,” Khiruev continued. “It’s nice to finally meet them.”

Brezan nodded, and tried not to imagine what Khiruev might talk to his fathers about. He'd greeted them himself, of course. He'd been talking to them more regularly since the end of the war, and it _had_ been nice to see them. Less nice to see Miuzan.

He couldn't help but think about the person who wasn't here. He kept thinking he saw a short dark-haired figure in black out of the corner of his eye, but he knew it was unlikely any of them would ever see Cheris again.

Khiruev looked at him for an uncomfortably long moment. At last she said, "I saw your fiance by the dessert table. I think she'd like to see you."

Brezan drained his glass, to hide his flush of shame. "I know," he said. He looked over Khiruev's shoulder. The desserts table was on the opposite side of the very large hall, and he couldn't make out Tseya's face, just the brilliant sky blue of her gown. "I-"

The spot of blue was wavering like a heat shimmer. "What was in that drink?" Brezan managed to ask, before he passed out.

 

* * *

 

Brezan woke up feeling alarmingly comfortable.

He was lying on something just the right degree of soft, wearing a warm robe, and the light was at a pleasantly moderate level, and he could hear birdsong. It definitely wasn’t his quarters on the Three Kestrels Three Suns, or his rooms on Krauwer 5 either.

Emio had gone over what to do in this kind of situation. Actually, she had insisted on going over at least fifty different scenarios of varying likelihood, up to and including “being attacked by trained feline assassins,” which he was pretty sure had just been an excuse to film him panicking when confronted by an angry cat. But he supposed it would come in handy now. He remembered her advice, and suppressed his automatic instinct to fling himself up and off the bed. Instead he tried to stay still and listen.

Nothing happened. There were no voices muttering about their diabolical plans over his head. Just the sound of distant birdsong, and the gurgle of flowing water, and a very quiet hum of air recycling.

He opened his eyes a crack. Nothing continued to happen, so he opened them all the way and sat up.

He recognized the room, after a moment’s startled thought. It had been ten years, but he hadn’t forgotten the layout of his suite on Beneath the Orchid. Things weren’t quite the same. The standing partition between the rooms was gone, and he could see that the ashhawk painting in the receiving room had been replaced by a hanging embroidered with orange carp.

He swung his feet off the mattress, and pushed himself upright. The air temperature was perfectly pleasant, but he still pulled the soft robe tighter around his naked body. He stepped through the doorway. There were clothes folded on the couch in the receiving room. Not his formal uniform, but a soft tunic and trousers in russet and ochre. Brezan dressed as quickly as he could. There was a box of jewelry on the vanity, but he left that.

In the corridor outside, golden flowers pointed him towards the center of the ship. The layout was unfamiliar, and he thought the plants and general garden design had changed somewhat, but that was to be expected, after all this time. It occurred to him that this might not even be Beneath the Orchid, that someone might have gotten ahold of that ship’s plans and duplicated his old room, but for the moment it was simpler to go with the most logical explanation.

As he traveled further along the flowering paths, breathing in the perfectly perfumed air, he had the impression that he was traveling back in time, the years peeling off of him like dead skin. At the end of his journey he’d be left ten years younger, with a chip on his shoulder but without the weight of an empire on his back. Any moment now he’d come around a curve and end up exactly at the end of those ten years, his eyes about to meet hers for the first time again.

She was sitting at a table in the center of a garden. The table was set for two. Brezan, half caught in the past, was struck by the differences from his memories. Of course there were no signs of aging on her face, but her hair once luxuriously long hair was now bobbed, cut at a sharp angle. Her clothes were still shades of rich rose blue, but they were more conservative than he remembered, with hardly a frill in sight. He felt an unexpected thrill run through him when he noticed that she still didn’t wear shoes.

She tilted her face up at him, her eyes the same shade of warm brown. “You’re up,” she said. “Good. I was starting to get worried.”

“I’m touched,” Brezan growled, pulling out his chair and practically throwing himself down.

Her brown eyes did look a little worried, though. “How are you feeling?” she asked, her chopsticks motionless on her plate.

Brezan considered the question. “Fine,” he said, surprised. “Better than fine. I feel like I slept for a week.”

“You practically did,” Tseya said. “Eat up, you need the nourishment.”

“What happened?” Brezan asked.

“You were poisoned,” Tseya explained, picking up her chopsticks to push the fruit around on her plate.

“I did manage to guess that much, yes,” Brezan said. He sat down, for lack of anything better to do, and because it was awkward to loom over her; but he didn’t touch the plate in front of him.

“There were far too many suspects to narrow down, so once you had been stabilized the Protector decided you’d be safest on Beneath the Orchid.” So it was the same ship after all. “The wedding’s been postponed.”

“I gathered.” His stomach grumbled.

She pointed a chopstick at him. “Eat.”

Feeling like a chastized child, he picked up his chopsticks. The food was just fruit salad, but it looked delicious, and eating meant he didn’t have to talk or make eye contact.

They ate in silence for a while, her apparently just as disinclined to chat as he was. He tried to remember the last time they’d talked. A week before the wedding. She’d called him up to clarify a point about the guest list. They’d both lingered on the line long past the question’s resolution, both wanting something that they didn’t know how to ask for.

“So,” Brezan said, when he’d eaten all the fruit, “what are we doing now?”

“The wedding’s called off until our security can figure out what happened,” Tseya said. “We’re being sent to the Havern Isocracy on a diplomatic mission, to get us safely out of the way for a while.”

“So is this an actual mission that requires both of us,” Brezan asked, “or just an excuse for Inesser to send the two of us off together?”

“I’m not sure why you’re asking me,” Tseya said, “I don’t have any particular insight into the Protector-General’s head.” She peeled a grape, delicately.

“You know her a hell of a lot better than I do,” Brezan pointed out.

“Well, we’ll have plenty of time to speculate,” she told him. “It’s a three-week trip to the Isocracy. I hope your quarters are comfortable?”

“They’re more than adequate,” Brezan said. Her smile of delight seemed entirely genuine. "Thank you for the robe."

"Yes, I am sorry for that," she said, "though it was the medics who undressed you, not me. I would say it's nothing I haven't seen before, but, well." Her smile now was less delight and more warmth. "Congratulations." 

He felt himself turn red. It wasn't as bad talking to her about it as it would be with anyone else, but he still felt a rush of embarrassment. "It seemed like the right time. It's not like my family or the Kel have been happy with my choices this past decade anyway." And the upcoming wedding had seemed, at first, like the opening of a new chapter.

"Ah. I was fortunate," Tseya said, "my mother never had a problem with it. It was everything else about me she loved to criticize." Her tone hadn't changed in the slightest.

Brezan's chopstick seemed suddenly loud when it clinked against his plate. "Right," he muttered. 

"Don't look so worried. It's adorable, but you should know I've come to terms with everything that happened."

"That's good," Brezan said. "Since we'll be stuck alone together for weeks." 

"Indeed." 

His plate was empty. He stood up.

“You know, I think maybe I am a little tired,” he said. “Excuse me.”

“Of course,” she said, calmly solicitous, but he felt the weight of her gaze on his back as he made his way out of the garden.

The interior layout of the ship had changed, of course. Was no doubt changing as he walked. His only hope was that she didn’t know he’d been learning things from his Shuos guards. Ten minutes’ urgent hacking at a grid access point disguised as an ornamental trellis got him a straight path to the escape pod.

His luck held; he managed to get the escape pod completely disconnected from the ship’s grid and (hopefully) firewalled before the ship-to-ship communications indicator lit up. Brezan took a moment to hold and let out a breath, and then flipped the switch.

“Can we talk this over?” Tseya’s voice said through the tinny speaker. Her tone was humorous, but there was an edge to it.

“The bartender worked for your family,” Brezan said, shortly. “I woke up here. Doesn’t take a genius to realize you’re the one who poisoned me.”

He paused. Part of him, he realized in that moment, wanted her to deny it. His throat hurt. There was only silence. It made his head ring.

“I can guess at a few reasons for all this, but I don’t really care which it is, and I’m not sticking around to find out. If the General’s the one who put you up to this I probably won’t get very far, but I’ll put up a hell of a fight, you can count on that.”

“I was protecting you,” Tseya said, in a rush.

Brezan stared at the blinking light. 

"There was an assassination planned," Tseya said, so quietly that it was almost difficult to make out the words- though that might also have to do with how her normally musical alto voice was unusually rough and strained. "I didn't want them to know they'd been found out. This seemed like the best solution." 

Pause. Long pause. "Really," Brezan said, eventually. 

"I... may have been emotionally compromised," Tseya admitted.

Brezan stared at the pod's navigation controls without seeing them. The blinking little lights formed a nice counterpoint to the pattern of headaches forming around his skull. "What does that mean?"

"It didn't seem like either of us felt ready for the wedding, and this solution, I admit, did put you rather at my mercy for an indefinite period of time," and she laughs, tiny and embarrassed and a bit sad. "But I promise, mostly I just really, really didn't want you to die."

"Oh," Brezan said. 

He cancelled the course calculation on the navigation board, and began the airlock cycle.

She was waiting for him outside the airlock. "Thank you," she said. She really did look relieved. He wanted to kiss her, but he also kind of wanted to get back in the escape pod.

"You couldn't have told me?" he wanted to ask, but he knew the answer to that, unfortunately. His terrible jeng-zai face. 

"I don't want you to die," Tseya said, "and I _do_ want to marry you; and most all I want you to stop looking at me like that."

"Like what?" Brezan asked. 

She stepped forward, slowly, and put a hand on his face. Her eyes were beautiful. He remembered how blue they'd been, when she'd tried to enthrall Cheris, and longed to see that blue again, longed for her to take him over, to take away all the doubts and fears. But that wasn't fair; she was a mere human the same as him, if significantly deadlier, and she had doubts and fears too.

"All right," he said, "all right."


End file.
